Building a Shed Takes Longer than You’d Think

Just roughly laying out where everything is to go and initial leveling

Some time around mid-October I finally got up the gumption to build the shed we need to get all the yard tools out of the foyer in the basement.  I thought about just buying one but after a lot of looking around, I realized we were looking at an enormous outlay of cash for a shed any bigger than a glorified carport for the lawn mower.  So I priced out the materials to build a good sized shed and decided now (or then) is the time and the weather is starting to finally cool off so I won’t die of heat exhaustion either.  Well it’s New Year’s Eve as I write this and although it’s just about finished, it took much longer than I had first expected.  Pretty much the only times I’ve been able to work on it are weekends and holidays and a few of those have been rainy soupy messes so I’ve had to cram as much building as possible into every available weekend, even if a few of them have been a bit chilly.

This last week of the year that my employer gives us off has been a true blessing with very few rainy days and even with several days set aside just for holiday stuff, I’ve finally been able to spend the better part of several days to really get some work done.  The entire structure is complete save some short two foot extensions left to finish off the roof and some small triangle shaped panels to go between the side walls and the slightly angled roof (just under a 10 degree pitch).  The entire structure is exactly 16 feet by 8 feet.  We were originally going to build it 16 by 10 but those extra two feet just seemed a bit too large.  As it is, it’s very large for a shed and it works out well for the size plywood is sold in :)   It’s no accident it’s also 8 feet tall (actually a little over nine at the front given the extra height for the pitch of the roof).  Oh and I need to build the doors and hang them.

Any mistakes?  A few but nothing huge.  I should have spent more time preparing the ground for the foundation laying a nice thick bed of gravel under the entire structure but I didn’t have time and I don’t have a pickup to go get a really big load of gravel (yet).  I did lay some gravel down but only under and around the foundation blocks around the periphery and in the middle of all the foundation cross-members.  Please don’t quote Matthew 7:26 to me or we may just get into a fist fight :)   Over the course of construction the center blocks appear to have sunken about 1/8 of an inch or so.  Not a lot but I’ll need to keep an eye on it.  The whole thing is unbelievably heavy but not so unwieldy it can’t be re-adjusted with jacks and some dirty clothes.  The rear half of the wall wasn’t perfectly square so I had to position the last two panels deliberately slightly crooked to even it back up and cut some skinny wedges to fill the gap along with lap fasteners.  Once it’s completely sealed and sanded you’ll never notice but you can clearly see what I did from the inside, at least until I wall up the inside, if that ever happens.

Here the foundation is completely leveled and all the flooring is done. There are several blocks underneath the floor as well that you can't see here. You can see how uneven my yard is by the varying size of all the foundation blocks. The back corner you can't see is three blocks deep.

So hopefully I’ll have time to finish the rest of the structure tomorrow save the doors since I need some 1x4s and 1x6s to build the frames that I don’t currently have and almost everything is closed tomorrow and it’s Sunday anyway.  All that’s left then is to finish the roof with that cheap corrugated vinyl stuff, seal all the joints, and prime and paint it.  I decided to just patch it really well and paint it for now and maybe later get some good vinyl siding.  Some flashing around the bottom and a bit of landscaping and voila a nice matched shed (or it will be once we paint the house :) ).  I didn’t keep track of everything I spent but I’d guesstimate about 600 or so.  If I had bought a shed this size it would have been somewhere north of $3500.  It’s a lot of work.  I mean a lot of work.  Really.  No I mean it.  Don’t start a project like this unless you’ve got some help (that you can trust to do a good job not just work for free pizza and you end up with a crooked nightmare) or you enjoy construction.

I had all the tools I needed so all it cost me was building materials and I already knew what I was doing from planning to design to construction.  If I had built something half the size it wouldn’t have taken anywhere near as long since so much more structural support is required.  Most importantly I enjoy building stuff like this.  Even if I had four grand to blow on a good quality structure this size I would have built it myself anyway just because it’s fun.

I’ve inserted several other pictures below in roughly consecutive order.

Here the three walls surrounding the more complicated front section are complete. Note the angular supports to add much more support especially for the long idle periods between weekends of construction.
Here all the one foot standoffs are complete that the roof supports will hang from. Note there are only three “rafters” that are only there to hold the structure square while the roof supports are completed that are the actual structural beams. Combined with the roofing this forms a very rigid support structure. I know because I had to get up on top of there to nail all the plywood on!
Here a couple roofing sections have been put up and several of the wall sheathing panels are up. Dominique helped a lot with getting these perfectly sqare. This is not a one man job unless you are really strong. One of the extension panels is also up with all the notches cut out for the roof supports to poke through.You can’t really see from the photo here but the notches are a bit sloppy but it doesn’t matter since once everything is done some fascia is going over top of everything.  Also note the difference in the bottom crossbar length between this photo and the one above.  I made a design change and had to saw it roughly in half.  The support beams on each side are very wide and heavy (double wide).
This is a shot of Dominique bringing me some more nails for securing the roof.  I think this was the day we got all the rest of the support structure finished underneath and the thin slat cut where the two panels don’t meet.  The two panels hang over the side a couple inches on each side so there is an empty section in the middle.  The front sections I won’t need to do this as I can just cut them so they line up with the support beams but the four large panels at the rear I wanted to place uncut.
This is the cross-bracing underneath where the panels don’t line up with the studs, that also partially support the thin slat in the picture above.  Without these the panel on one side would sag horribly.You can see some of these cross-braces on the walls as well where the panels don’t line up with the studs.  The ceiling was intentional but the back walls were just a bit of bad planning.  The front section is deliberate.  They give the door area more strength and the two smaller panels would have made the stud spacing a bit strange.
  Here you can see the smaller panel on the one side is on and the cross braces are started for the other side.  If I remember correctly I was running out of daylight that day an decided to stop there.  There are two more braces left to go in on the one side before the panel goes on.  The front side should be very tortionally strong; the doors are going to be heavy both due to their physical size and the framing that keeps them rigid.
  This is a final photo I took before it started getting too dark to take a wide shot.  Everything is finished now except the front sections of the roof (about two feet), the two small triangular fascia pieces at the very top on each side, sealing of all the joints, then painting and finishing the roof with some cheap corrugated vinyl sheeting.  The doors will just be the same plywood the rest of the shed is made of with 1×6 framing around the edges on both sides with four big hinges per door due to their weight.
  This isn’t the greatest photo but you can see my little squaring booboo.  One of the panels had to be placed slightly crooked to keep the next one straight.  I cut out a thin wedge to fill the slight gap, secured it with lats from the inside, then sealed the whole thing with outdoor caulking.  I didn’t use silicone since it would have been impossible to sand smooth later.  The panel placed next to this one was almost perfectly square but I did have to shave a small bit at the bottom with my handy new Christmas present.Speaking of tools, I think the “Ridgid JobMax” is my new favorite tool.  There was a promotion during Christmas for the multitool and an extra free head so I got the jigsaw head.  The “JobMax” is basically a big AC motor that is the handle and you can snap different heads on the motor.  The two heads that I have are the multitool head and the jigsaw head, both of which are just really really handy.  Hats off to Ridgid for this idea.  It’s a great tool, it’s so stinking handy, and so far the quality is outstanding.  They even thought of putting a little light where the blade is that is more than just a gimmick.  I really like this tool.  Maybe the best Christmas present ever.  Thanks Dominique!
   This is taken from inside.  You can see all the extra framing around the doorway to handle the extra weight of the large doors.  The frame itself is double wide all around, with three extra “rafters” (that you can just barely see) holding it strong from back to front torsion, plus the four extra cross-braces that both hold the sheathing on and add extra strength for any side-to-side movement.  The doorway needs to be strong since the doors are going to be big and heavy, and swing almost 180 degrees.
  Today (New Year’s Day to be exact) I got the last pieces of the roof up.  The photo is the center piece.  It’s made of two pieces so I could maximize usage of leftover plywoodwood.  They fit perfectly and lined up nicely with the other two big sections.  The big sections at the front were cut to line up with the studs so the cross-braces didn’t need to extend out past the front of the shed on the outside.
   And finally a picture of the completed project save the two side pieces I’ll be putting on tomorrow.  I also put in the two extra cross-braces inside that you can’t see here today.  That completes everything except the two side pieces.  Then it’s all just fascia and painting (except the doors of course).
   Here is a closeup of the front section of where the top pieces will go, hopefully tomorrow.  Once those are cut and up the entire thing is complete except the doors.  I’ll be spacing blocks along the edge from leftover 2×4 pieces to attach the triangles to.  I’ll probably need to screw them in rather than nail them since the top half of the block probably won’t be strong enough to take the pounding.
   And finally!  The last two pieces!  They actually went in a little easier than expected.  It was putting the mounting blocks in behind them that was a real pain.  I picked up all the acrylic patching compound so next weekend, assuming we get another batch of warm weather, that will get all put on along with all the roofing.  I decided to box in the overhang since the rafters aren’t perfectly even.  I did them in a bit of a hurry since they were very awkward to hang initially (I had to do them by myself) so they aren’t perfectly even.  Building a simple box around them will fix my little mistakes and it will probably look nicer anyway.
 Winter – if you can call it that – has finally settled in this last week (mid-January) so I haven’t been able to do much.  It even snowed a little (but melted the next day).  This is the first door of the two swing out doors I’m building (bottom photo).  All the white stuff is exterior acrylic patching compound, the same as what is all over the front in the top photo doing dual duty as a sealant between large sheathing panels, and a patching compound over any knots that will show through when painted.  Given that I’m not putting siding on it right away it looks nicer when painted with all the knots smoothed over.  For the doors, it’s mainly just covering all the screw holes.  You can’t see from the photo because they’re all covered now but there is almost a full 1 pound box of screws holding the planks on both sides against the plywood.  The doors will be a little heavy but they are really solid.

I had to bring it into the dining room to apply the acrylic compound because it’s too cold to apply outside.  Once the acrylic patching is dry tomorrow I’ll be cutting out the hinge notches and mounting it outside.  I may not be able to paint for several months but everything is sealed.

I did the roof a couple weeks ago.  What a messy job.  I used asphalt roll roofing instead of the corrugated plastic or aluminum I originally planned on.  Because the roll pieces are so big and don’t have any self-adhesive, you need to use a lot of roofing tar that just sticks to everything if you’re not careful.  It looks good and is nicely sealed along the front and nice and even.  I still need to build the casing around the rafters but I want to get the doors done first.  All those clamps along the top are holding the edge of the roofing against a thick layer of roofing cement using some long skinny pieces of leftover lumber and plywood.  I took it all off about a week ago and it all sealed together nicely.

Once the doors and the casing are done, the only thing left is painting.  Building a shed this large takes a ton more time than one say half the size say only 8 by 4 and maybe 4 or 5 feet high instead of 16 by 8 and 8 feet high (9 and a half with the roof).  There is just so much up and down the ladder because the roof is so high and everything is so big; most of the panels are uncut 8 by 4 plywood sheets.  All the studs need more support while building if you’re doing it in place.  It takes a lot longer to level a foundation that big.  With building a house you expect it to take forever but I really didn’t expect it to take so long just to build a shed!

As a side note you’ll notice the ugly carpet and general mess and disarray in the dining room.  We’re planning on renovating that room soon so hopefully all that crap will be gone soon and it will be a real dining room again.

Freedom Chains

The CD I finished recording towards the end of 2009, “Freedom Chains” is finally being published soon.  Right after all the studio recording and editing was finished and the CD master was ready my wife finally got her visa approved to move down with me permanently to Virginia, then shortly afterwards I got busy on and off with recording another CD betwixt casually house shopping, then of course a good six months of serious looking and the life sucking process of actually purchasing a home.

Well all that’s been over for several months now and save some casual renovations things are settling down and I’ve actually had time to get production started on new CDs and start marketing.  No, I’m not starting a nationwide promotional tour nor do I have any delusions of selling millions of copies.  I just enjoy composing and recording and sharing that with whoever I can and hopefully presenting the gospel in a catchy entertaining manner in the process.  I have a regular job like everybody else.  I’m not a long haired “it’s all about the music man” type.  It would be nice to get a couple thousand copies out there though.  It’s my first not purely-instrumental album so hopefully it doesn’t scare too many people :)

We’re heading up to Ottawa soon.  When we get back I’m hoping to be solid into the forever fall season here in Virginia.  Summer here is just a humid sweaty nightmare for about three months and now that that’s over I can get more of the outside work around the new house done before we settle firmly into winter (which isn’t really winter compared to Ottawa) and finish or at least get a lot more done of the new CD I started before we moved.

So that’s about it.  New CD.  Fall.  Winter.  Newer CD.  Oh wait no that’s not it!  My wife is finally (hopefully) getting her license in a couple months.  We’re saving for a new truck so she’ll have a vehicle and I’ll have a work truck for doing the major renovations we have planned over the next year.  Somewhere in there I hope to find time to do some recording :)

Cool days are here again

Two weeks ago the central air conditioning unit stopped working.  Summertime in northern Virginia is not a good time for this to happen.  Notice I say “topped working” and not “died”.  The blower motor in the outside condenser just wouldn’t start once in a while then more often then not at all.  Without even looking I knew it was either the run capacitor, the blower motor itself, or both.  Turns out it was both.

I was able to get it to limp along using it sparingly after replacing the run capacitor and keeping the old motor well oiled but it was just plain worn out and could only run for about fifteen or twenty minutes before overheating and tripping its temperature limit sensor – and it would get very hot!  But with the insane humidity and high temperatures this time of year I figured what the hey let it overheat I’m replacing it anyway.

I fond a replacement on eBay and it arrived today.  I got the old motor out and got the new one mounted and wired in in about an hour and a half and not a minute too soon as it was almost completely dark outside by the time I got all the panels screwed back into place.

All in all it cost us about ninety bucks with the new capacitor and motor and we had to brave about three days of above 80 degrees in the house during the day but it’s working now.  I just pray the condenser lasts at least until next year!  We bought the house knowing the air conditioner was old but to be honest there isn’t much point replacing it until it dies beyond my expertise to fix it.  Just looking inside I think the previous owner may have replaced the condenser pump already as it looks fairly new.  The blower in the furnace blows strong and is extremely quiet for how much air it’s pushing through the house so I’m kind of guessing that’s been recently replaced too.  Why spend several thousand dollars replacing a system that is mostly new already (now) that will only be marginally more efficient?  I say run it into the ground until it completely dies.

As I write this the temperature is back down to 75 which is a nice change of pace!

Time to start ripping things out

Well we should probably take a breather since my brother-in-law and his wife are coming down to visit in a couple weeks but after that we’re pretty much raring to go to start ripping the snot out of the basement to remake it into the living space we can, well, live with.  We are sans truck right now so we’ll probably wait until we’re ready to buy most of the building materials we’ll need before putting up anything new but we can start ripping stuff out soon as most of the remaining stuff downstairs is unpacked.  Surprisingly enough you really can unpack in as little as two months :)

There are many areas of the house that we can get started on but the basement is going to be the big money hole just due to the amount of building materials because of the sheer size so we’re trying to put as much of the rest of the house off as we can until the basement is done.  Anyway that’s pretty much all I wanted to blog about tonight.  Ciao for now…

Frigidaire FAD704DUD Dehumidifier

Marketing people should pay more attention when assigning model numbers to their products.  Save the poorly chosen model number it works pretty well.  There is not much to say other than it pulls more water out of the air than I expected.  The reviews I read had complained about it being too loud I thought were a little exaggerated.  I wouldn’t want to sleep in the same room with it on even at the low fan setting but in a reasonably large room it’s not that obtrusive.  I don’t know how it could be much quieter without being much larger with more sound insulation.  We bought ours for the huge room downstairs and the smaller recording studio next to it.  After four days it can finally reliably get the room down to a comfortable 40 to 45% humidity.  If set to its lowest setting of 35% it would probably rarely if ever shut off.

What I don’t like

There should be two digital readouts; one for your target humidity level and one for the actual level.  If you set it to constant (“CO” on the display) it runs non-stop but also never shows the current humidity level.  You have to temporarily turn it up to 35 and wait a couple seconds for it to switch back to the current humidity display.  Not a huge deal but when we first started using it leaving it in constant mode for a couple days it was a bit of a pain.

The drain connection is useless unless your running a really short hose or maybe running it down a set of stairs or outside and down a hill.  I ran it for several hours with a 50 foot hose ran over to the tub in the basement bathroom and there was nothing whatsoever at the other end.  It wasn’t even moist.  I may try again letting it run all night and see if it can make the distance with more water falling into the hose.

What I do like

The bin is extremely easy to remove and empty.  I read some reviews before buying it from people complaining it was difficult.  They were either on crack or just complain about everything.  It’s extremely easy to remove, empty and re-insert.  The fan runs for several minutes (not sure how long I didn’t hang around to time it) and then shuts off when it reaches its target humidity level.  Again, reviewers complained about the fan running constantly.  They’re wrong.  It shuts off it just doesn’t shut off at the same time as the pump which is what you’d want it to do, moving some air through the system before completely shutting down.

Our basement gets really damp and since we bought this puppy it’s a comfortably place to live now.  We can now start renovating and tearing things out without feeling like we’re cleaning out a swamp.  Even the carpet feels much nicer.  It felt like walking on a slip-and-slide in places it was so damp.  Not that it matters we’re ripping it out and throwing it away but at least it doesn’t feel gross the short time it stays on the floor.

Anyway my impression is I definitely got what I paid for.  It was just under two hundred bucks at NewEgg with free shipping.  It was the biggest one we could get and I’m glad we got it.  We have a 25×30 room and another 20×20 room that it keeps dry very handily with a fan blowing the dry air across the two rooms.  Even the foyer at the very end of the basement is much drier feeling now.  I’m happy.  It does what it’s supposed to.  The bin fills up between every five to eight ours so it’s fairly convenient to empty in the morning and when I get home.  It shuts off when the bin gets full and automatically comes back on when you empty it and put it back in.  No muss no fuss.  I’m happy.